Mike Reuther - Return to Dead City

by Mike Reuther

  “Reba?”

  “His big brother’s wife. Shit. Some detective you are.”

  I decided to file that one away. I turned back to the photo. “So Lance wasn’t trying to become like this?”

  “Hell no,” he said. “He just wanted to get stronger and add a little beef is all.”

  “I thought lifting weights makes a ballplayer muscle-bound?” I said.

  Slaughter shook his head. “That’s an old myth. Lot of players have helped themselves with weight-training. Look at Canseco or that guy used to play for the Angels‒Brian Downing.”

  “Did it help Lance?” I asked.

  “You figure it out. His home run total was awesome. What did he have, twenty-two, twenty-three homers in just the two months he was here. Yeah. I’d say it helped.”

  “It must have been pretty hard for Lance to get into any type of proper weight training though,” I said. “Those muscles didn’t get a little artificial stimulation did they?”

  Slaughter leaned forward now in the chair. He stared hard at me.

  “What are you gettin’ at?” he said.

  I smiled. “Just that the team’s out of town a lot. He must have missed a lot of workouts.”

  “They got gyms in other towns,” he said. He looked away and began drumming the fingers of his right hand upon the desk top. Suddenly, he stood up. “I’ve really told you everything I know about Lance Miller. I got a workout to do.”

  “Just one more thing,” I said. “You were talking to police last night outside the hotel.”

  “I’m not saying I wasn’t,” he said.

  “I think you know a little more than you’re willing to admit Slaughter.”

  He came around the desk and stood with his face about six inches from my own. He was a couple inches shorter than me. It was kind of funny, considering he was built like a well-loaded tank.

  “I could pick you up and bounce you outta here like a basketball,” he said thickly.

  I stepped back and gave him my best good guy smile. “Have a nice day muscle boy,” I said.

  Although I’d been back in Centre Town for about two months, I was still discovering how things had changed in the city during the past twenty years. The abandoned storefronts, thanks to the presence of the Ocyl Mall about eight miles away, had killed the downtown business district, turning it into a roosting spot for the drug dealers, bums and loiterers. There was a lot of crap in the Centre Town Progress, the city’s only newspaper, about the problems in Centre Town caused by the “influx” from Philly, a nice way of saying that the “niggers” were ruining the town. It seemed like every week someone with an eye on a political job‒always a longtime resident who longed for the good ol’ days when the town had been full of “hardworking, God-fearing, neighborly folks”‒was bellowing in the newspaper about the town’s rising crime, always attributed, of course, to the recovering drug addicts fleeing Philly for Centre Town’s recently opened rehabilitation centers. I wasn’t too spaced out on Scotch most of the time to see that there were more African-Americans in the city than what I recalled from the old days. They were on the corners waiting for buses, working in some of the coffee shops and bars, shooting past me on sidewalks with their ghetto blasters and basketballs. And yeah. I’d been stopped by a few slick-talking dudes trying to sell me weed or crack.

  The old hometown was changing. I didn’t need to hear any local politician scream about that. I didn’t need to hear any stuff about Lance Miller being killed by some drug addict looking for a fix either. But that’s the crap I began to pick up.

  In a drug store down the street from Mick’s, at Market and Fourth, I picked up a Sunday edition of the Progress before heading outside to sit on the bus stop bench. The traffic was light along the street, the sweltering weather having apparently driven most of the folks inside to buildings where they could find air conditioning. On the corner across the street, a vacant lot had been transformed into a small park where on weekdays the downtown business crowd could often be seen idling away the lunch hour. At the moment a couple of kids were playing around on skateboards. They looked about twelve or thirteen, and the skill they used to weave and dart about the park’s picnic tables was amazing. I had thrown the thick Sunday edition on the bench beside me without bothering to glance at the headlines. I was content to just sit there watching the kids perform their acrobatics and allow the hot August sun to beat down on me when some woman carrying a shopping bag sat down on the bench. She was an enormous package squeezed into a print dress. With a grunt, she managed to get her big fanny on the bench. For just a moment she glanced my way before her eyes found the newspaper resting between us.

  “Oh my. Where will it end?” she said.

  She looked up at me while pointing a stubby finger at the paper. “May I?”

  I nodded.

  She sat the paper on her wide lap. Screaming back at her was the headline:

  Ballplayer found dead in hotel room

  She read slowly, using the stubby finger to follow the printed words, seemingly devouring every word like some sex-starved nymphomaniac pouring over pictures of naked men. When she was finished, she placed the paper gently on the bench and stared out into the empty street.

  “I’m going to the mall and enjoy myself,” she announced. “Then I’m going to take the bus back here. Pack my bags and never come back to this awful town.”

  I pretended to look hurt. “Was it something I said?”

  She was off then on a diatribe about the “nigger drug dealers” and how Centre Town was once a nice town but now no longer was even a safe place to live.

  “Is that what the paper says?” I asked.

  You’d of thought I’d just inquired of her weight. The cold look she threw me could have chilled an Eskimo.

  “Any fool can read between the lines,” she said angrily.

  The bus came just in time. With a heave and a grunt, she managed to rise. She pulled at the seat of her dress with a pudgy hand and lumbered off to the bus.

  “Have a nice ride,” I called out as she pulled herself up the steps of the bus. She didn’t bother to turn around. Inside, a sea of black faces were pressed up against the windows.

  The newspaper told me little of what I didn’t already know about the murder. Time of death was listed at 10 p.m. Cause of death was attributed to massive internal bleeding due to a knife wound. There was a statement from the district attorney’s office about how all resources would be used to investigate the case. And the article quoted at least one resident of the Spinelli Hotel who said he was “horrified” about the murder. “The town’s more dangerous since that element from Philly started living in our community,” said Raymond Sauers, 57, who lived in Room 701.

  I found two interesting facts in the article. First of all, Lance had been recalled by the New York Mets shortly after the game on Saturday. That explained why his bags had been packed. He was set to join the big league team in New York. The second piece of information tagged at the very end of the story listed Ron Miller of Centre Town as the only surviving relative of Lance’s. That stopped me. Another guy from the First Ward? The thing was, I had no recollection of anyone named Ron Miller.

  Back in the drug store, I found three Ron Millers listed in the phone book. I dialed the first number of a Ron Miller who lived on Rural Avenue. After two rings, a recording came on the line informing me the number had been disconnected. I struck gold on the next listing which gave a Grand Boulevard address. A man’s voice, sounding somewhat business-like but with a trace of timidity, came on the line. He admitted he was in fact Ron Miller, and I got right to the point.

  “Are you Lance’s brother?” I asked.

  There was a pause. “Yes.” And then, “is this about his murder?”

  I told him it was and that I was a private dick.

  “Just a moment please,” he said.

  He put down the phone, and I heard the muffled sounds of his voice and that of a woman.

  “Has someone hired you
to take on this case Mr….”

  “Crager. Cozzy Crager.”

  “Yes. Mr. Crager. I don’t want to get into the particulars of this thing right now as I’m sure you understand. My brother’s murder comes as a great shock to me.”

  I assured him that I did and decided on a different approach.

  “I’m an old First Ward guy Mr. Miller. But I don’t seem to remember you.”

  “I’m afraid I didn’t grow up in that neighborhood Mr. Crager. You see. Lance and I are half-brothers. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m afraid we’ll have to cut short this conversation.”

  In the background I could hear the woman’s voice again. She was telling him to hang up.

  “Just tell me this…”

  “I’m afraid I have nothing further to say,” he said. “Good day Mr. Crager.”

  I headed back to the apartment and spent a few hours losing myself in the newspaper while staring down a bottle of Scotch on the coffee table. Since returning to my native city, my drinking time had slowly inched into the daylight hours. With little detective work to occupy me in my first months back in Centre Town, it was a constant battle to keep the bottle at arm’s length while the sun was still up.

  I wanted to find out more about Lance but on a Sunday I knew finding people to talk to wouldn’t be easy. Other than Mick, I knew no other acquaintances of Lance’s, and with the Mets’ ball game out at the stadium called off because of the murder, I figured the ball park would be empty. A day at the kiddy park with Pat and the brats didn’t seem so bad now.

  I flicked on the television and got my usual distorted images. Since moving into my place, I’d kept my bills to a minimum. That included doing without cable TV. With a coat hanger serving as an antenna, I was able to get all of three stations on the set I’d reclaimed from the local thrift store. I watched the Philly game for a couple of innings until I was out of my mind from bouncing off the couch every few minutes to turn the coat hanger. Finally, I heaved a shoe at the set. Roger Clemens couldn’t have thrown a better pitch. A flurry of sparks exploded from the television. The picture tube went white with snow then died to black.

  I fell back on the couch. The sudden quiet of the apartment was nice. For the longest time I just sat there thinking of nothing in particular. A box fan on the floor across the room blew hot air across my face.

  And then, I was back in Albuquerque. We were breaking into a house. The drug task force. The front door of the house flew open and bodies scrambled through the living room, furniture toppling, the mad dash to flee and the chattering of Spanish voices. And then the gun held by a kid and trained on me.

  I woke with a start. Holding the glass with a single shaking hand, I poured myself three fingers of Scotch. The brown liquid rolled down my throat like a snake quivering into its hole. In a few minutes, the gunfire retreated from my brain, and another nightmare from the hot and arid Southwest had faded from my tortured memory banks. I poured myself another glass of the Scotch, took a sip, eyed it suspiciously, like a spurned lover considering a former mate, and brought the drink to my lips before lowering the glass. In disgust, I emptied the stuff from my glass back into the bottle. I got the hell out of there.

  Grand Boulevard was where you lived in Centre Town when you had achieved the country club set. It was a wide street of old Victorian homes, tasteful mountain stone mansions and wide sweeping lawns.

  Ron Miller lived in one of the grander versions of the street’s palaces, a large Tudor partly hidden from the avenue by a menagerie of trees. A broad driveway paved in yellow brick ran from the street to the side of the home. A dark-colored Porsche was parked outside the garage.

  A cab drive got me there. The cabbie was a shrunken old fart with an asthmatic cough, who talked nonstop about his forty years working in some machine shop. The only job before this he’d ever held or wanted. I just sat there in the back of the cab mostly ignoring his spiel. I was still a little shaky from my nightmarish afternoon snooze.

  “Yep,” he continued. “Still be there too. They made me retire. Said I was getting too old. What the hell did they know anyways?”

  “Life is a bitch,” I said without too much enthusiasm.

  We were just pulling up to a big iron gate left opened at the foot of the driveway.

  “Say,” he said, looking from me to the house. “You must have some important business to be coming here. This Ron Miller fella is one hotshot businessman.”

  I got out of the cab and took a five out of my wallet. “Yeah,” I said. “Me and Miller are gonna see about setting up some massage parlors. Miller thinks the business climate in Centre Town is just about right.

  The old fart sat in the cab staring at me. “Say,” he said. “Maybe you can get me a discount. My old arthritis has been flaring up lately.”

  I gave him a wink. “Don’t keep the meter running pal,” I said, tossing the five through the window onto his lap.

  Miller met me at the home’s massive double doors. He was wearing a dark-colored suit and looking like I’d just disturbed him from important matters. He was a roly-poly guy with a sort of Humpty Dumpty girth, I guess you could say. The oval glasses he peered through seemed to pronounce his roundness all the more. His face was as smooth and unlined as a baby’s behind.

  “What? No butler to answer the door,” I cracked.

  He wasn’t amused. “You’re not a reporter. Are you?” I said I wasn’t.

  “I wanted to ask you about your brother’s murder,” I said.

  The big eyes behind the oval glasses blinked several times. I figured it was a nervous habit. The kind of nervous habit that could get under your skin.

  “Who are you sir?” he asked.

  I handed him one of my cards. He stared at it for a few moments then gave it back to me.

  “Can I come in?” I said.

  He shook his head. “No. That wouldn’t be possible. Besides, I have nothing to say.” He stepped back and tried to close one of the double doors, but I got my foot in front of it.

  He couldn’t believe it. The eyes behind those glasses fluttered like the vertical hold on a television gone amuck.

  “You … you’re forcing me to call the authorities,” he sputtered.

  “Who is it Ronald?”

  It was the sharp-edged voice of a woman. Over Miller’s shoulder I barely caught a glance of her head from above his head poking around the staircase banister. The face quickly disappeared, and then I heard her footsteps coming down the stairs.

  “It’s nothing. Nothing at all,” Miller called back.

  And then she came into full view descending the carpeted staircase, a full-figured woman with a swan-like neck and flaming red hair. It was her. The society babe from the ball park.

  I leered a little too long as she came toward me. It would have been hard not to.

  Chapter 3

  She looked to be about thirty or thereabouts. But there was a kind of matronly grace about her. She didn’t walk down the steps so much as glide down them‒like someone coming to the door to greet guests arriving for a party. And in her yellow pants suit and white sandals and pearl earrings she was a woman who glowed. She damn well had the looks all right. I had a good inkling she was more woman than Miller could handle. And in more ways than one. Spotting me, her look turned hard. She brushed past Miller and in a determined stride came toward me. She stopped a few paces before me, her eyes boring in on me like drills.

  “What’s this all about?” she said in an accusing tone. She glanced from Miller back to me.

  “You’re Mrs. Miller?” I asked.

  “I am. And you are?”

  “Crager.”

  I stepped forward and stuck out my hand. She looked down at it like it was dog shit.

  Reluctantly, like picking up soiled rags from the floor, she lifted her hand toward me. The hand was cold. That’s when I caught sight of the wedding ring on her hand. It had to be the size of a baseball.

  “He’s a private investigator Reba,” Miller said
, glancing nervously at his wife.

  “I guess it’s no secret why you’re here.” Those steely eyes held me for a few moments. Almond-shaped and hazel, they were eyes that didn’t miss anything. Reba Miller, I decided, was nobody’s fool. This was a woman who knew the rules and how to get exactly what she wanted. It’s funny how you can size up a person so well in a matter of moments. Eighteen years of police work can do that.

  “You may as well come in,” she shrugged. “I’ll make some coffee.”

  Her husband couldn’t believe it. He started to say something before moving aside to let me pass. I gave him a smile and stepped inside.

  I was struck first by the crystal chandelier hanging from a round skylight in the foyer. It sparkled from the sunlight bursting from above. On the one wall was a painting of horsemen in snooty English hunting outfits chasing down a fox. An archway led through the opposite wall into a high-ceilinged room. It was there that Miller led me.

  We sat at an angle from each other in high-backed chairs making small talk, mostly about some of the accouterments of the room. There were lots of trappings of the rich. I have to say that. I noted several paintings of a local artist named Dave Arbor which hung on the walls. Arbor had gained some national recognition painting scenes of the rolling countryside around Centre Town. He was supposed to be good, but I could never see it. Not that I had an eye for art but pictures of old barns and Mennonite women doing quilts just don’t do it for me. Miller said the pictures were originals. I was impressed with that. The guy had to have put out some bucks for them.

  His wife arrived with the coffee in a few minutes. The tray and the cups looked to be china. Everything matched, of course. I suddenly felt like I was at a damn tea party.

  Miller’s wife put the tray down on a glass coffee table and sat down in a love seat abutting her husband’s chair.

  “You’ll have to excuse us if we seem a bit abrupt with you Mr. Crager,” she said. “But murder is not something we find easy to discuss.”

  “Especially when it’s one’s brother,” added Miller.